The earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period ( ca. The oldest accurately dated star chart appeared in ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC.
Best skychart full#
The Nebra sky disk, a 30 cm wide bronze disk dated to 1600 BC, bears gold symbols generally interpreted as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, several stars including the Pleiades cluster and possibly the Milky Way. Ī star chart drawn 5000 years ago by the Indias in Kashmir, which also depict a supernova for the first time in human history. The bovine in this panel may represent the constellation Taurus, with a pattern representing the Pleiades just above it. Īnother star chart panel, created more than 21,000 years ago, was found in the La Tête du Lion cave ( fr). Rappenglueck also discovered a drawing of the Northern Crown constellation in the cave of El Castillo (North of Spain), made in the same period as the Lascaux chart. He also suggested a panel in the same caves depicting a charging bison, a man with a bird's head and the head of a bird on top of a piece of wood, together may depict the Summer Triangle, which at the time was a circumpolar formation. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago.
German researcher Dr Michael Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich, has suggested that drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France could be a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion, although it could not be confirmed and could also be a pregnancy chart. The oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk, drawn by early people from Asia who moved into Europe, that was discovered in Germany in 1979. All in all, Cartes du Ciel offers a bunch of interesting options to all astronomy fans.Farnese Atlas at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples Prehistory Ī variety of archaeological sites and artifacts found are thought to indicate ancient made star charts. No errors were shown in our tests, and the tool did not freeze or pop up error messages. The application has a fair response time and does not put a strain on computer performance, since it uses a very low amount of CPU and RAM. deep sky object, solar system, constellation), enable night vision mode and switch to full screen, as well as generate charts, among others. Other options of Cartes du Ciel let you view a calendar on the given location, identify variable stars, save an image to file (PNG, JPEG or BMP format), perform an advanced search (e.g. planets, comets, asteroids) and enable animations while having the possibility to record them to file.įurthermore, you can jump to equatorial, ecliptic or galactic coordinates, mirror the image horizontally or vertically, as well as rotate it left, right or by 180 degrees. You can change observatory details, date and time settings, run simulations (e.g. The interface is comfortable to work with, as you can navigate the sky and zoom in and out using the mouse cursor.
In addition, you can fill the local horizon with color and display the horizon line, track an object before it rises, as well as establish atmospheric refraction (pressure, temperature, humidity, troposphere temperature lapse rate). location code, vicinity, coordinates, country name, time zone).
Best skychart software#
Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts) is a comprehensive software application that you can use to prepare sky maps for observation, according to a set of user-defined rules.Īt startup, you can set up the observatory by assigning a location from the database (e.g.
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